CIA Director: North Korea ‘Close Enough’ to be ‘On the Cusp’ of Achieving Nuclear Strike on US

Though the Trump administration remains unsure of when exactly North Korea will perfect its nuclear weapons capabilities, CIA Director Mike Pompeo made it clear this week that the threat is serious enough that the administration intends to approach it with a sense of urgency.

“They are close enough now in their capabilities that from a U.S. policy perspective we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving” their objective, he said Thursday at a security forum hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank, according to CBS News.

He explained that the specific timeline isn’t as important as understanding the threat in general.

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“(W)hen you’re now talking about months, our capacity to understand that at a detailed level is in some sense irrelevant,” he said, noting as well that North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons program every day, meaning a military conflict grows more inevitable by the day.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster, who also spoke at the event, shared this outlook.

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“We are in a race to resolve this short of military action,” he said, as reported by the New York Daily News. “We are not out of time, but we are running out of time.”

Even Pompeo’s predecessor, John Brennan, who served as director of the CIA from 2013 until early 2017, appeared to have similar concerns, warning Wednesday evening that the prospects of a military conflict with North Korea “are greater than they have been in several decades.”

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“I don’t think it’s likely or probable, but if it’s a 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 chance, that’s too high,” he added, according to CNBC.

And while the Trump administration would rather avoid a military entanglement, both Pompeo and McMaster assured the audience Thursday the president would order a strike if necessary.

Pompeo noted that there’s a difference between North Korea being able to fire a single nuclear missile and having the capability to produce an arsenal of such weapons, but cautioned that the threat must not be underestimated nonetheless.

“Whether it happens on Tuesday or a month from Tuesday, we are at a time where the president has concluded that we need a global effort to ensure that Kim Jong Un doesn’t have that capacity,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner.

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Thus far, China has reportedly reduced its trade with North Korea, but McMaster was hopeful Russia might join the efforts as well by, at the very least, urging North Korea to cease its push for nuclear weapons.